SFFWorld News – 7/15/08
 
1) MGM is remaking 1984’s SF shoot-em-up flick Red Dawn, about young Americans waging guerilla warfare against an invasion of Soviets and Cubans. The original movie starred Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen and C. Thomas Howell. It was the first film to get the then-new PG-13 rating in the U.S. for the large amount of violence in the film. Screenwriter Carl Ellsworth is penning the up-dated version, with Dan Bradley directing. The re-make is expected to deal with American fears in the wake of 9/11 terrorism.
 
2) MGM has also given busy Joss Whedon the greenlight on a horror movie The Cabin in the Woods, written by Whedon and Drew Goddard. Goddard, who also wrote the script for Cloverfield, will direct the film, with Whedon producing. The movie is a celebration of the deserted cabin horror film tradition.
 
3) Actor Don S. Davis, who played Maj. Gen. George Hammond on U.S.’ SCI FI Channel's series Stargate SG-1 for seven seasons, and on its spin-off Stargate Atlantis, died June 29 after suffering a heart attack. He was 65. Fans wishing to make donations in his name can do so to the American Heart Association. Davis, a former theater professor, had a 26-year acting career which included many roles as a military or authority figure. His SFF work included Twin Peaks, Andromeda, The Twilight Zone, Supernatural, The Dead Zone, The Outer Limits, The X-Files, Needful Things, Highlander: The Series, and Hook. Davis’ final Stargate appearance is in Stargate: Continuum, a DVD movie, and he will appear posthumously in the films Vipers, Woodshop and Far Cry.
 
4) BBC Video is releasing in late July for the U.S. market the DVD for Spaced: The Complete Series, the British fantasy comedy series. Created by Simon Pegg, who also starred, Spaced was about two people who pose as a couple to get a really good flat, and contained surreal fantasy sequences referring to sci-fi, horror and comics, similar to shows like Northern Exposure and Scrubs. Pegg, co-star Jessica Stevenson (now Hynes) and series director Edgar Wright will be publicizing the release in the States with an appearance at San Diego’s Comic-Con International and an up-coming appearance of Pegg on The Late Show with David Letterman. 
 
5) Warner Brothers and producer Rawson Thurber are adapting Elfquest, the cult comic by Wendy and Richard Pini. Thurber will also direct. The original comic series, self-published by the Pinis in 1978, concerns a tribe of elves, the Wolfriders, who attempt to survive against or ally with other elven tribes, humans and trolls. Both Marvel and DC Comics took up publishing the series at different times. It was one of the early comics graphic novel series to be widely sold and merchandised in bookstores.
 
6) The original, complete version of famous SF silent film Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang and co-written with his wife, Thea von Harbou, was only shown at its 1925 premiere in Germany. An Americanized version, re-written by Channing Pollock, appeared in the U.S. in 1929, and was thought to be the only version to survive. Recently, however, the Museo del Cine, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, has discovered in their archives the original film. The movie was apparently sent to a film distribution company in Buenos Aires for viewing, then ended up in the hands of a film critic who sold the reels to the Argentina National Art Fund for its archives in the 1960’s. A copy of the reels was made and housed in the Museo del Cine in 1992, where it has been recently discovered by the museum’s new curator. The film has been authenticated by experts in Germany, and contains many scenes that had been cut from the American version.